


The Barmaid in Tight Jeans

by voleuse



Category: Ugly Betty
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-01
Updated: 2008-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>A warpath of sorts for every wrong ever wronged us</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Barmaid in Tight Jeans

**Author's Note:**

> Vague spoilers for 2.04. Title and summary adapted from _Las Girlfriends_ by Sandra Cisneros.

  
_Girlfriend, I believe in Gandhi.  
But some nights nothing says it  
quite precise like a Lone Star  
cracked on someone's head_.

 

Back when they called her Wanda, Wilhelmina cared about what people thought about her. Smiles from her superiors were her bread and butter, before she reinvented herself and discovered caviar on crackers. She found, however, that making other people's lives easier meant they stopped noticing her. They forgot her, and she'd already spent too much of her life being ignored.

Under Faye's critical eye, she transformed herself into someone who would never be ignored again.

Now, the interns scrabbled under her gaze, and she only had to smile for the cameras and Bradford Meade. When she walked through the cafeteria, the staff whispered nonsense about her.

She fired, no set a freelancer on fire, because he didn't consult her on photography. She kept three bullets in her pencil drawer, but nobody knew where she stashed the gun. She never drank anything except the tears of puppies and the odd virgin.

Wilhelmina strode through each day with satisfaction, because she no longer worried about pleasing anyone but herself.

  
_Little Rose of San Antone  
is the queen bee of kick-_nalga_.  
When you go out with her,  
don't wear your good clothes._  


 

Sometimes, after Justin went to bed, Hilda snuck out of the house to go dancing. (She used to sneak out to do other things, but she couldn't think about _that_, not yet.) She would catch a cab heading towards the first club she could name, and dashed on make-up, hasty and perfect, on the way there. She slid out of the cab and brushed wrinkles from her blouse, shook her hair out and decided she was invincible.

Hilda liked dancing with men, because it was easy to find them, and easier to leave. She danced with women, too, but she waited for them to come to her. It didn't matter, really--a twist of her shoulder and twistier grin, and she never lacked for partners. She closed her eyes when she twirled, and limited herself to one beer and one margarita. If they played the music loud enough, she would sing along beneath the bass thump.

She joked and she bickered and she laughed and she spun, and every time, she celebrated being alive.

_Ya'll wicked mean, a voice at the bar  
claims. Naw, not mean. Shit!  
Been to hell and back again.  
Girl, me too._

 

The gaps haunted Alexis at the oddest times.

When she turned, absent-minded, and realized she was standing in front of a urinal. When she went jogging in the morning, and four minutes in, realized she had forgotten her sports bra. When she winked at a cute redhead on the other side of the conference room, and received a puzzled frown in thanks.

She thought to herself, often, that she had wanted this for so long. It was the details that kept biting her in the ass.

At the end of the day, alone, she would pour herself a finger of scotch. She held it up, watched the last rays of sun cast through the glass, spackling against her skin. She told herself she wanted this, and it was worth wanting it.

She told herself she would work for it, because she was a Meade, and they could never take that away.


End file.
